


power & control

by TheBookDinosaur



Series: andromeda tonks [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8610067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookDinosaur/pseuds/TheBookDinosaur
Summary: Andromeda learns to sculpt her body, to never leave any motion or expression unchecked; Ted Tonks learns to read her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> story title comes from the marina and the diamonds song of the same name

When she is a little girl, Andromeda learns many, many things, through a variety of different channels.

First, the most obvious; etiquette tutors teach her posture and manners, and history tutors are always careful to make sure they can draw the Black family tree from memory and recite some of the more notable feats they’ve performed. Latin tutors teach her a dead language, and French tutors teach her a live one. 

She learns swearwords from the house-elf who works in the garden and insults from the paintings in the front hall. She learns how to fight with pillows and how not to swing them near a bedhead in case the cloth catches and rips. She learns how to braid, and French-braid, and then fishtail Cissy’s hair. She learns how to sneak up on birds so that they don’t notice that she’s there until the very last moment.

She learns how to straighten her back so that her spine is stiff to just the correct degree and angle, as perfect as Mother could wish for. She learns how to allow her shoulders to slope gracefully. She learns how exactly to cross her legs – primly, to maintain her good image, but not too obviously, for fear of being mistaken as a prude. She learns that they are the best because they are pure-blooded, because their lineage can be traced back to Merlin.

She learns every corner of her house – which boards are creaky, which stair-rails are stable enough to slide on, which portraits are always willing to tell a story and which ones will alert Mother to her presence (unfortunately, the latter type far outnumber the former, which rooms are friendly and those that are not – until she can make her way around the place with her eyes closed (and does, on some occasions, when she’s especially bored).

Mother teaches body language and the secrets of high-society conduct through soft-harsh whispers and asides at teatimes, and makes sure that her girls watch her as she conducts herself to teach them through demonstration. Aunts and uncles who make their way around for dinner teach her to be seen and not heard, and then proceed to unintentionally teach her about acceptable and (and on one memorable occasion, when a guest complimented a gift from an estranged relative and then looked around like an animal in a trap at the sudden, all-consuming silence that followed his remark, unacceptable) dinner-table conversation topics.

She learns how to make tea that’s only a little less bitter than sucking on lemons, because visitors need to be reminded that as soon as they step into her house they are at her mercy, and that it would be easy for her to slip poison into tea, if she hasn’t done so already. She learns that every movement that she makes, every gesture she displays, needs to have a meaning behind it, needs to be calculated, and she learns how to keep a polite impassive face even if a hurricane throws her emotions around inside.

* * *

She thinks that Hogwarts will be a revelation, something grand and new and different from home. She hopes that the castle will be bright, and happy, and cheerful, and she thinks that maybe she can let her guard down around these people, because they will be happy and cheerful and the very opposite of Mother and Father.

Hogwarts – it is difficult to explain Hogwarts. The school is not the revelation that she’d hoped it would be. Hogwarts is an old, drab castle coloured in greys and rather unfriendly paintings. The students in the years above think they they’re better than her just because they know more, and it irks her when she has to move off chairs or tables for them. Andromeda is not sure that anyone will ever be able to navigate the castle with its twisting corridors and hidden passages and moving stairwells. She is almost convinced that the castle moves around while she sleeps just to spite her.

But at the same time, Hogwarts _is_ the revelation that she’d hoped for, because there are stacks and stacks of books in the library which is so much better than the one they have at home, and all the students add up to an endless amount of people to observe, to learn body language and tones and gestures from. And, of course, there are lessons and teachers – some of them, like the Potions professor, are not at all interested in teaching her, but others, like the Herbology and Charms teachers, refuse to be intimidated by her family name and push her to be the best witch she can be, and she is in love with the sensation of knowing she is learning, and learning well. Hogwarts is a fount of knowledge, and that delights her endlessly.

* * *

If she is ever asked when she learned to manipulate her body as she does she will answer that she doesn’t know, and it will be the truth. She knows that it started while she was at Hogwarts, and probably sometime during the holidays when she observes the bodies of others at high-society events, but her Hogwarts years are a blur of education and gaining knowledge, and her time at Hogwarts spanned seven years.

Still, sometime during her fifth year she notices that she sculpts her body to her wishes and her projections. Her body is a blank canvas, a lump of clay, a block of stone, for her to do with what she will, and she will make her body a work of art, as others have sculpted their bodies into shapes of their liking. She learns through observation, and she can see the others in her life doing this.

First, Mother: she who wants to appear so strong, so sharp all the time. Andromeda sees how Mother’s shoulders are straight and narrow, perfectly straight at all times because Mother is in control at all times. Her jawline is sharp and this is emphasised by the arrogant tilt upwards of her head; her nose is straight and perfect for looking down upon other, lesser, people. Mother, whose spine is always straight and who carries herself so that the lines of her body are sharp and crisp. Marriage hadn’t softened her, becoming a mother to three girls had not softened her. Pretty words at social gatherings, flattery from her family members, gentle words from her girls; nothing will soften the harsh lines of her body.

Second, Bellatrix: Andromeda’s older sister, a little frightening, very intense, in a way that speaks of red. She has a way of carrying herself that speaks of confidence; her stride is wide and open, like a man’s, and her chin is tilted further upwards than Mother’s, far more provoking, a constant challenge. She is daring everybody to comment on her self-assurance at all times. Her shoulders are relaxed because so is she, and her lips are always turned up, infuriatingly, at the corners, because she acts better than you, she knows better than you, she is better than you. Her legs do not bend when she walks, because Bella is not one to bend. Her hair flies loose and curly around her face because she refuses to restrain herself, because she is utterly carefree.

Third, Narcissa: The youngest sister, the darling of the family, the one who is used to being doted on, and perhaps the most innocent of the three sisters. Andromeda is quite certain that her carriage is genuine, because she is too young and innocent to imagine putting on airs, or colours, or feelings. Her shoulders slope down and her lips are straight; the very picture of innocence. He eyebrows are drawn in just a fraction, and it causes her to look melancholy, enough that boys will become bewitched and try to fix her. Her hair hangs loose around her face – not like Bella’s, because Bella’s hair all bouncing curls and challenge. Cissy’s hair is straight around her face to hide it, to give her shyness and, perhaps later when she is deemed an appropriate age, to tease boys by hiding her face coyly, still innocent.

And finally, Andromeda. The middle sister, the sister that one was least apt to notice; Bella was the wild one, Cissy was the pretty one, and she begrudged neither of them their titles. Andromeda shaped her shoulders to slope only slightly, to appear as though they were holding firm. She set her shoulders to look like she was carrying the world and that she was used to it. She stood straight and proud and confident because she wasn’t going to hide from the world when she was the one carrying it. Her chin lifted enough to tell confidence, but not enough to issue a challenge, and she set her lips straight in her face. But she doesn’t imitate her mother, and she keeps the curves in her body; she keeps grace in her body, starting her movements with one body part and allowing the rest to follow so that when she moves it appears as though she’s pouring herself into whatever situation she’s in at the time. She moves smoothly to intimidate, to appear otherworldly, and she moves quietly, because she has taken childhood lessons to heart, and the people around her should know to be scared of her. If she can position herself barely inches away from them without their noticing, what else could she do to them while she is couched in silence?

Andromeda is tired of being underestimated because she is a girl, or because she is still underage, or because she is from a rich family, or because she doesn’t get perfect marks all the time. She sculpts her body to remind people of dangerous, graceful animals, lionesses and tigers and jaguars, and the snakes that are her house emblem. She moves to remind people that she holds the world on her shoulders, and that she is dangerous.

* * *

When she tells her housemates to stop bullying first years, that Slytherins should stick together, they listen to her. And the little eleven-year-old on the floor smiles hesitantly at her while she offers a hand to help him up.

“They listen to you,” he observes. “You’re intimidating. You look dangerous.”

“It’s the way I hold myself,” Andromeda says. “And my shoulders, and how I move all the time.”

“Isn’t it tiring?”

Andromeda shrugs at him. “I’m used to it.” It is tiring, to constantly wear a façade, but she’s not going to tell that to a first-year.

* * *

Sirius pulls her out of bed one morning to tell her that he’s accidentally caught some seventh-year in a net, and could she please get him out? And when he cracks his head on the way out of the net, she takes him to the Hospital Wing and pretends that she stays out of duty. This is how she meets Ted Tonks properly.

Ted Tonks is the revelation that she’d wished Hogwarts had been. He says what he means, and his refusal to hold his body in a specific way is not out of carelessness, or a lack of discipline, but because he is proud of who he is, and he doesn’t mind if he world sees him.

“Well,” he says when she brings this up to him, looking a little uncomfortable at her assessment of him. “You’re right, I guess? I don’t feel the need to – to do whatever it is you do, but also, I’m just very lazy and can’t be bothered to put in the effort.”

The first time she comes to him in tears – _we’re going to have to break this off, Ted, what are we doing, what are we doing_ – he comforts her, brings her to the kitchens and offers her tea.

“Tea? Why on earth would I want –?”

“Don’t worry,” he assures her, “I’ll use my mum’s recipe, you’ll see.”

He makes her tea, chamomile with honey in it, and when she stares at him confusedly he laughs and pushes it towards her. She drinks reluctantly; she doesn’t want to pretend to enjoy poison-bitter tea in front of him, partly because she doesn’t want to lie to him and partly because he’s becoming alarmingly good at seeing through her facades, but when she tastes it everything seems to stop.

“It’s sweet,” she says, setting it down and staring at it for a moment. It’s _warm_ , she thinks, yellow, like sunlight, but she doesn’t quite know how to express that. The honey curls on her tongue.

“Yes?” Ted says, confused at her confusion. “What, did you think I was going to give you English breakfast or something?”

“In my house,” Andromeda says, and Ted leans forward a little because she doesn’t talk much about her childhood or her house, “In my house, tea is always bitter.”

“Always?”

“Yes,” Andromeda says, taking another sip. “It shows that we have power, you know? If we can make your tea bitter we can slip poison in it and you’d never know.” With the benefit of hindsight it seems stupid, but it had never occurred to Andromeda that tea could be a comfort instead of a threat.

Ted pauses at that, and the anger on his face is clear for the world to see. “’Meda,” he says, but then he pauses, at a loss. “Not everything has to be about power,” he says finally, watching her drink his tea.

“I think I’m starting to learn that,” Andromeda replies, a small smile on her face.

* * *

Ted Tonks thinks that there probably hasn’t been a more fascinating person than Andromeda Black in history. He watches and learns her, and laughs for half a minute when she tells him that he’s _reading_ her, like she’s a book.

“Rude,” she huffs, but the smile on her face says that she doesn’t mind.

“I’m not reading you,” he says. “I’m just paying attention.”

“You are most certainly reading me,” she replies. “You know all my expressions, and you always known when I’m lying. I think that was when I first loved you,” she adds, reaching out to tangle their fingers together. “When you told me I was lying, and when I asked how you knew you said it was my expression.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ted says. “We were fighting, then.”

“But you were the only person who ever read my lying,” she says, with an earnest look in her eyes that says she just wants him to understand. “Ever since second year, nobody’s noticed when I lied to them. Or they didn’t care enough to point it out.”

“I think I get it,” he says, slowly, because he's starting to understand. “When I notice you lying, it means – I care enough to notice, and to accuse you.” She nods, her dark hair distracting him. “It’s not that hard,” he says then, easily, tapping his fingers on her cheek. “I just pay attention. You do the same for me.”

“But you don’t try to hide your emotions,” Andromeda tries to argue. “They’re there, and all I have to do is read them.”

“It’s the same with me, then,” Ted says. “Maybe I just have to read harder words.”

She laughs, and tells him that he’s utterly ridiculous – which, he’s never going to tell her that when she says _utterly_ it’s possibly the poshest thing he’s ever heard and _ridiculously_ endearing – and mumbles something into his shoulder that sounds suspiciously like an, “I love you so much, you idiot.”


End file.
